A CENTURY ago many Americans fretted about a minority in their midst, which reputedly owed its first loyalty to an obscurantist faith, and which, in league with foreign conspirators, was poised to destabilise the country. In particular they suspected—as some Republican presidential candidates imply today—that houses of worship had become dens of sedition and vice. So it was that several states passed “convent-inspection” laws, to help uncover stashes of arms supposedly hidden in nunneries by Catholic traitors (as well as maidens immured against their will). Donald Trump, eat your heart out.
Actually Mr Trump’s plans for monitoring mosques are not the most egregious aspect of his anti-Muslim platform: the authorities of many mosques, having no wish to harbour extremists, already voluntarily liaise with the security services. Even uglier was the stampede, of governors and congressmen as well as presidential candidates, to insist that Barack Obama abjure his (rather paltry) plan to take in some 10,000 Syrian refugees next year. Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz advocated the selective admission of Christian Syrians; Ben Carson compared...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/1PZqJHf
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